Recipient organisationOffice for National StatisticsSource-published name: Office for National Statistics
Funding£12.7M
PeriodJun 2018 — Jul 2021
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
The UK government is linking together its own administrative records—tax returns, census data, school records, hospital visits—and letting accredited researchers analyse the combined datasets in a secure digital environment. Currently, researchers who want to answer questions about how policy affects people’s lives must navigate separate, incompatible data systems held by different government departments. This fragmentation makes it difficult to see, for example, how a change in housing benefit interacts with children’s school attendance or hospital admissions. ADR UK, coordinated by a central hub and delivered through partnerships in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Office for National Statistics, solves that by creating a single, safe research infrastructure. If the project succeeds, policymakers will have direct evidence on what works and what does not—without waiting years for bespoke surveys or risking privacy breaches. The ONS is expanding its Secure Research Service to handle this safely, and the goal is that government departments provide data once, then see it reused efficiently for multiple policy questions. This is not fundamental science; it is an applied infrastructure project that quietly makes the machinery of government smarter.
View original technical description
ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK) is a partnership transforming the way researchers access the UK’s wealth of public sector data, to enable better informed policy decisions that improve people’s lives. By linking together data held by different parts of government, and by facilitating safe and secure access for accredited researchers to these newly joined-up data sets, ADR UK is creating a sustainable body of knowledge about how our society and economy function – tailored to give decision makers the answers they need to solve important policy questions. ADR UK is made up of three national partnerships (ADR Scotland, ADR Wales, and ADR NI) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which ensures data provided by UK government bodies is accessed by researchers in a safe and secure form with minimal risk to data holders or the public. The partnership is coordinated by a UK-wide Strategic Hub, which also promotes the benefits of administrative data research to the public and the wider research community, engages with UK government to secure access to data, and manages a dedicated research budget. ADR UK is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. To find out more, visit adruk.org or follow @ADR_UK on Twitter. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) plays a crucial role in sourcing, linking and curating public sector data for ADR UK (Administrative Data Research UK), ensuring that all data is accessed by researchers in a safe and secure form. To support the ADR UK partnership, ONS is expanding and improving its established Secure Research Service (SRS) – the organisation’s facility for providing secure access to de-identified public sector data for research – and significantly increasing the range of administrative data available. ONS will focus on increased data reuse to deliver efficiencies to government departments (who only need to provide data once), and maximise the use of this data by identifying shared priorities and objectives with government departments.
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